Out to Sea in Canada’s Southern Gulf Islands

Out to Sea in Canada’s Southern Gulf Islands

The brilliance of the morning sun on the quiet sea between the southern Gulf Islands islands is both blinding and deeply energizing this morning. I am on North Pender Island with a friend who I met through the Thomas Hubl work, looking east between the islands into the sun rising over the Cascade Mountains in the distance.

I left my Scamp in Vancouver and took a 2 1/2 hour ferry ride on Friday which gave a lovely tour between and around the many islands here, and gave me an intro to how the whales feed along the “tide-line” where the muddy water meets the clean blue ocean.

Life on Pender Island feels tranquil in this sunny spring weather — completely lacking the bustle of beautiful Vancouver where i have been for the last few days and where i will be again soon. Below is the view out my window. We watched the bald eagles fishing for their breakfast this morning from my friend’s balcony where this picture was taken.

Vancouver is a wonderful city as cities go — for me at least. I love the symbolism of the marketplace (complete with skyscrapers) in the same visual frame as the pristine snowcapped mountain range. There is something close to my heart, close to my life purpose about holding both together. Its about being in the marketplace, being in the practical, down-to-earth complexities of modern life and staying connected to the mystical mountaintop experiences while in the midst of it all. Remember the subtitle of my first book? “Everyday Living as Spiritual Practice”. That is still very resonant theme in my life and in Vancouver yoo can literally see and feel both at once.

Here on Pender Island I experienced the beauty of a small tight knit community of people including rich musical talent (I attended a Pender community concert including a youth choir) and deep agricultural and sea-connected cultural roots. Visiting here reawakened my love of small town life. It gave me a sense of my own current disconnectedness from this kind of earth based community, and made me wish to find it again at the end of my traveling years. But there is also in me a sense of connectedness to a larger, more global community of people who share the vision of a way to live together on this beautiful planet and are each playing a part in bringing this vision into reality. For now at least, this is my community. You are my community. Not being rooted in one place is a price i am happy to pay for my altogether new freedom of movement and the grace of a vertical connectedness to that which animates and sustains us all.

It is kind of like celebrating Mother’s Day after my mother has left. It has an added, more universal quality to it without the need to call or send flowers.

One Comment

I didn’t realize you left the Scamp in Vancouver. So much easier than navigating it onto the ferry! I’m so glad you got to meet with JR! I so enjoyed our day together. Such an easy flow. Amazing journey of connection you’re on.

The Caterpillar, the Butterfly & the World

Imagine for a moment that you are a caterpillar who is finishing up with caterpillar life. You have instinctively wrapped yourself in a cocoon. Your old life is dissolving. Nothing works anymore. It looks like chaos. It looks like the end.

Then, in your imagination, put yourself in the position of being the butterfly coming into being as the caterpillar finishes. It feels to you now like the caterpillar has recycled himself to support your new life. Caterpillar chaos and death (?) seems to be allowing room for and actually supporting your becoming something else – something quite new.

One thing we can do in these times of upheaval and turmoil in the world, is to consider this metaphor to begin to look at situations through the eyes of the butterfly. These new eyes focus not so much on the destruction of the old but see most clearly the arising of a new possibility for humankind.